


Intrinsic

by Lsusanna



Series: The word you're thinking of is anathema...or maybe panacea--but it's all semantics from here. [1]
Category: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: #squee#, Aftermath of Torture, Artist Steve Rogers, Break Up, Established Relationship, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, In which I ignore Cap2 and SHIELD is still SHIELD, Issues, Loss of Trust, POV Natasha Romanov, Science, Skrull Steve Rogers - Freeform, Skrull(s), Trust Issues, past trauma, romanogers - Freeform, space, the enterprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2794658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lsusanna/pseuds/Lsusanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead,<br/>When the skies of November turn gloomy...</p><p>The captain wired in he had water comin' in <br/>And the good ship and crew was in peril. <br/>And later that night when his lights went outta sight <br/>Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald…"</p><p>-Taken from the lyrics of 'The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald', by Gordon Lightfoot</p><p> </p><p>Natasha Romanov isn't a good person, and she never pretended to be. Steve Rogers seems to think she is--or at least, he believes in second chances. When she's put to the test, she doesn't know if she's failing or not. </p><p>Natasha isn't a good person, but here's the catch--she forgot to actively remember she's a bad one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I've seen the Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon, and Romanogers was my first ship, and I still love it to death; and this plot was floating around since before I knew fandom was a thing. Thus, here you go. Enjoy and thanks for reading!

**_“Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn.”_ **

**_-C. S. Lewis_ **

 

 

 

It’s an instant decision.

 

Natasha’s eyes snap open, the world registering.

 

There is a man, a large, muscular silhouette, straddling her; squeezing the air out of her lungs.

 

Her hand swipes down off the side of the mattress, feeling for the handgun she keeps half-hidden under the bedskirt. She finds empty space. Natasha continues her arc, hand coming up to the knife wedged between the mattress and box spring, looking for a hilt to grasp, a blade to sink into an ear, under a chin. The knife is also gone.

 

Natasha focuses back on the man as her lungs begin to scream. His weight is centered firmly over her hips, rendering her legs useless, so she smashes the heel of her palm up under his chin instead.

 

His neck snaps back, but he stays focused. Natasha opts for a blitz attack; ramming her hands into his face and neck, carving a furrow into his cheek with her nails, just barely missing his eye.

 

He feels familiar. Natasha doesn’t have the time to want to wonder why.

 

It works, eventually, and Natasha gets her legs between them. She kicks him off the foot of the bed and he lands with a thud. Not sparing a second, Natasha rolls across and off the bed, landing in crouch. Steve’s shield is where it always is, leaning between his nightstand and the bed. He had been sleeping next to her when she had fallen asleep. He’s gone now.

 

Natasha rises from her crouch, and closes with the agent.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

They fight brutal and hard for a handful of long minutes. Natasha hears an alarm start to blare, and has the nagging feeling that the man is familiar. Not his fighting style, not completely; but his shape, his size, his height.

 

The door blasts open. They disengage as light streams into the bedroom.

 

Natasha sees the Iron Man suit raise its gauntlets out of the corner of her eye, blue light gleaming from the palms; but Tony doesn’t shoot.

 

Natasha gets a good look at her attacker.

 

 

Her attacker is Steve.

 

Steve; but not Steve. Steve’s body, his face, but not his expressions. There was something deeply wrong, there, something… _evil_ under his chalcedony blue eyes.

 

A wry smile blooms across Steve’s face, filling it with a sadism that seeped all thought and impetus from Natasha’s mind.

 

“…Steve?” Natasha says, voice rough post-asphyxia, and she can feel the confusion that twists her features.

 

The smile widens, darkens, as new voices and footsteps clamor up the hall behind Tony. Steve seems vaguely, sardonically amused. Natasha’s brows furrow as his eyes flash yellow-green.

 

What comes next is all a blur of movement.

 

Steve throws a knife with sudden precision, the same that she keeps hidden under the mattress.

 

Natasha sees it; _feels_ it bury itself in her abdomen up to the hilt.

 

She staggers as Steve dives around Tony.

 

She falls as the shouts and crashes and gunshots from the hall seep into the bedroom’s air.

 

She closes her eyes as Clint’s voice fills her ears from far, far away.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

Natasha opens her eyes, the steady sound of a heart monitor filling her ears. She feels someone’s presence, and turns her head to the source.

 

Bruce is standing there, a little sheepishly. “Hi. You’re up. You, um, missed Clint; he’s had his ass glued to that chair for the last two days,” he jerks his chin to a plastic chair pushed against the wall. Shifting the binder he holds from one hand to the other, he continues. “I was, uh, looking at your chart. I’m not technically supposed to, but… Do you, ah, want anything?”

 

Natasha swallowed, throat throbbing. “…What happened?” She asks hoarsely.

 

“Uh, well, you lost a lot of blood. The knife hit your liver, so, you needed surgery. It went well. You’ve been stable for a while. You should recover pretty quickly.”

 

“…What happened?”

 

Bruce sighs.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Natasha Romanov, is a stupid, stupid girl.

 

‘Love is for children’. That has been her mantra for most of her life; the physical manifestation of the thought she needs to stay strong, stay detached. It had been what the Winter Soldier had said to her, when she had still been young and naïve enough to ask questions that had needed such answers. It had been one of the best lessons he taught her.

 

But she had forgotten. Let her guard down. It’s what everyone had always counseled her to do; the SHIELD psychiatrists, Coulson, her teammates, Clint. Steve, too, as gently as was his wont. (That should have been the first clue. The lack of the quintessential Steve Rogers. But it had been so damn _subtle_ …) And it’s a good thing to forget, considered healthy. Until it isn’t. Until something goes wrong.

 

The Winter Soldier had forgotten, too. And look what had happened to him. That, at least, Natasha should have remembered.

 

The Avengers and SHIELD had been conducting a thorough investigation into the Skrull infiltration of Earth, since Agent Quartermain had ‘gone green’ in a SHIELD recovery room post-mission.

 

They had soon found that there were Skrulls embedded in most every conceivable place of influence; posing as high-ranking officials of clandestine international government agencies and the military. As politicians and diplomats; in the corporate world, board members and CEOs—the list goes on.

 

Tony and Bruce had devised an algorithm for wheedling the Skrulls from the humans. The process of smoking the Skrulls out of their hiding places had been picking up speed as of late; Steve’s doppelganger had apparently decided the investigation was going too well for him to risk staying in his position any longer.

 

It was amazing, the completely straight, empathetic face the damn thing had put on. No one had even thought to realize. They had been knee-deep in Skrulls, and still… No one had realized something might be off about Captain America. About Steve Rogers.

 

It’s amazing, given how sadistic it is, how well it had played the part. And it _is_ a sadist; personally, beyond its cause. You can see it, watching how it acts in interrogations, how it holds itself. How it insists on keeping Steve’s face, twisting it into a mocking sneer, the scratch Natasha had given him tracing two long, scabbed-over furrows over his right cheek.

 

She should have seen it. She should have _seen_ it.

 

Natasha feels like being sick, every time she thinks of the soft moments, the days and nights she had spent with who she had thought was her husband. She had _slept_ with the damn thing; something it had taken delight in reminding her of, the first—and only—time Natasha had interrogated the alien. The derision, the smirk; the derogatory, misogynistic smile it had plastered on Steve’s face as it told her how good in bed it had found her, will stay with Natasha for a long time.

 

Natasha has finger-shaped bruises around her throat like a necklace for a week. Every time she sees them in a mirror she can’t breathe.

 

She hadn’t suspected anything at all till that night. It makes her feel like an idiot.

 

The only things she thinks about are the investigation, how much she hates the Skrull replacing Steve. What she keeps far from her mind is the actual Steve. Or the lack thereof. Natasha doesn’t want to think about how empty the Tower feels without him, how empty her bedroom feels, knowing he isn’t sleeping next to her; how empty her life is.

 

Natasha hadn’t realized how dependent on his presence she had become, how much she needs it to feel whole. She hates it.

 

Another thing she doesn’t think of is what she could have done to save him. She doesn’t think about how maybe, maybe if she had paid more damn attention, they could have realized Steve wasn’t there sooner, and maybe there would have been time to save him. (She knows it is highly unlikely, knows space is infinite, but oh _God_ , she _misses_ him sometimes.)

 

Steve’s shield is still tucked between his nightstand and the bed. Natasha hasn’t moved it. His socks are still piled in their drawer. The bed is going to wear unevenly; she still keeps to her side.

 

Love is for children. She should have remembered that.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

Natasha comes almost to terms with her denial of Steve’s death, when they find out from another, weaker alien that the victims were all kept alive. Alive and kept prisoner, somewhere in space.

 

The information acts like blood in the water. The team clings to it like a lifeline.

 

By now, SHIELD is familiar enough with the algorithm to take over. The Avengers focus on finding the Skrull space station holding the prisoners. Holding Steve.

 

Tony spends the majority of his time in a lab with Bruce, the two of them sleeping even less than normal, which is saying something.

 

Thor, meanwhile, jumps from realm to realm, searching for so much as a scrap of information that could be useful, till his face and bearing grow haggard and worn.

 

For his part, Clint liaises with SHIELD, but mostly just sort of hangs around Natasha, waiting for the action he’s most useful for, making sure she stays stable in that quiet, unobtrusive way he’s learned to use around her. She doesn’t really like the thought of being ‘handled’, but can’t find it in her to do more than accept and appreciate it.

 

And Natasha? What does Natasha do, while her team works themselves to the bone to find their teammate, their friend; the man she loved? Natasha does absolutely nothing.

 

They’re looking for a needle in a haystack. An intergalactic haystack. Steve is probably already dead. By the time they find a way to get to him, he almost definitely will be—and they’ll probably never find a way.

 

Natasha wants to just stay detached, keep herself from feeling the inevitable second wave of devastation.

 

And she hates this. She hates this chance, this hope, because hope never pans out; this hope will never pan out. All it’ll do is make moving on harder. All it’ll do is kill the rest of the team in the slowest way possible. Because they’ll never stop. They’ll always hope—especially Tony and Thor. Thor, because his brand of loyalty was rare and potent; and Tony, because he had been closest to Steve, after Natasha; and after Natasha, he was the one to feel the most guilt for not noticing.

 

But there they go, there they all go; hoping, trying.

 

Natasha feels pity for them all; feels like the only one with answers in a room full of geniuses, lacking the heart to break it to them that their friend is lost to them forever.

 

And he is. Steve _is_ lost. He has to be. To preserve her sanity, he has to be.

 

Natasha might feel a little dirty for that being the only hope she’ll allow.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

She’s cleaning her microwave— _her_ microwave, on her floor, because she’s been realizing with growing self-consciousness that she’s been monopolizing Clint’s couch and a lot of his time. His relationship with Bobbi is on the rocks again, so the healing factor is probably as mutual as anything can be, but still.

 

Natasha is in the process of cursing the calzone that had decided to explode all over her microwave in Russian and—more recently—Ukrainian, when the intercom comes to life.

 

 _I assume you just insulted my mother, so…I’m gonna go with ‘and fuck you too’,_ Clint’s disembodied voice says. About five different voices overlapping in an enthusiastic argument drown out the second explanation Bruce gives.

 

“…Hello?” Natasha calls up at the speaker situated in the ceiling.  

 

 _We did it!_ Tony yells finally.

 

“Did what?” She asks.

 

_Built the Enterprise! What else? I told you those Star Trek marathons were productive!_

 

“What?”

 

 _We built a spaceship—a better one, I mean_ , Bruce says, taking over the explanation. _FTL propulsion system._

_He means warp speed,_ Clint cuts in with a patience directed at Bruce.

 

_Yeah, right, that._

_And Fury used his…Geneva Convention-approved feminine wiles_ _to get one of the Skrulls SHIELD has in custody crack. We know where they’re being held,_ Tony adds.

 

 _We’ve got location, we’ve got transportation; all we need is a plan, and we’re gone. Space—the final frontier. Beam me up Scotty,_ says Clint.

 

Natasha swallows hard.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

Natasha had walked into her floor at the Tower one afternoon. Her assignment hadn’t gone horribly, but the plot twists had still left her peeved. The debrief had been too long, and the layer of dust that for some damn reason had found its way into her uniform had mixed with the sweat and made some sort of mud, and it had been there for approximately twelve hours, so she had the beginnings of a rash spreading over her chest.

 

A B line had been made to her kitchen, because the freezer was in the kitchen and the vodka was in the freezer, and therefore the kitchen was invaluable. Natasha had found Steve there, singing slightly off-key to an Elton John song, making grilled cheese; the good kind, made in a pan with obscene amounts of butter.

 

“I didn’t know if you’d be hungry or not when you got back, but— And don’t look at me like that, it’s…cultural…reorientation.” Steve had said defensively.

 

“I thought you finished with the ‘70s.” Natasha had replied.

 

“…” Steve had said.

 

Natasha had been about halfway through with the bottle she had pulled out of the freezer and her second grilled cheese, when Steve had started singing again. Natasha had smirked continuously for the next two hours. Medical had given her something for the rash, anyway.

 

It had been the almost nauseating, obscenely chick-flicky scene Natasha hates. The kind that, had she seen it on television or in a movie, would have caused her to throw popcorn at the screen. She’d actually done that, once, to the tune of Clint snorting beside her.

 

Natasha spends the first half of their journey through space thinking about it, and others. She has a list to choose from; Steve was conducive to forming such lists. He was one of three people in the world capable of really making her laugh.

 

 _Was it Steve in my kitchen, or an alien?_ That’s the thought swirling around Natasha’s mind, over and over, casting a shadow over almost every one of her good memories. Those are precious things, when one is the Black Widow.

 

There isn’t any way for her to know, either. The Skrull had refused to say. Its operation is shot to hell, anyway, so the only reason Natasha can think of, as to why he wouldn’t talk, is personal satisfaction; making them all suffer.

 

What Natasha hates the most—well, not the most, but it’s certainly up there—is that no matter how hard she tries, no matter how much she remembers, no matter how many times she puts together a chronological timeline; she just can’t pinpoint the exact time Steve stopped being Steve.

 

Oh, she can remember instances, especially recently; Steve being a little colder, a little more morally ambiguous, and a little vaguer as to how he was spending his time. Still not enough for the Skrull to blow his cover, but still enough that _someone_ should have noticed; but then, who the hell could have seen _that_ coming, even after they knew about the Skrull invasion?

 

She’s supposed to be more perceptive than this. It’s been what’s kept her alive this long. If no one else noticed, she at least should have—she’s made a career of it. Natasha blames herself for her stupidity; she had been to close. Who knows how many times the truth had hit her in the face, only for her to be too close, too attached to notice? That is the precise reason she had gone so long without making attachments—she was never willing to give up her clarity. Steve had gotten to her. With his quiet, stupid gentleness, and his ‘wait, Regan is that actor, not a president’, he had caught the spider most of the underworld had been trying to for years.

 

Or, had it ever been Steve?

 

The actual Steve Rogers had to have been pulled out of the ice, because SHIELD had run tests, and the one thing the Skrull couldn’t replicate under close scientific examination, was Steve’s serum. He couldn’t have been switched soon after waking up, either, for the same reasons. It had to have been him, at least for a long while.

 

It would have made for a wise decision, though; a fantastic infiltration. And looking at the chain of events, it even would have made sense. Steve had been particularly close friends with Tony; that could be construed as the Skrull positioning himself near Stark Industries and one of the world’s most innovative inventors. Steve’s taking a job with SHIELD—the Skrull putting himself inside the government. It’s how Natasha would have played it. And if it had been true, then they would all have made their attachments to an alien. The team would have been going after a man who didn’t even know them. And starting a relationship with a teammate? Well, Natasha has many secrets, valuable secrets, about a lot of people; both above and below ground. She’s valuable to the Skrulls.

 

And that bit—that could have actually been the Skrull. Natasha hates to think it, but it’s a possibility. It’s still possible that Natasha’s going after a man who knew her only as a teammate, maybe a friend. The love could be purely one-sided.

 

Natasha hates that she got herself into this.

 

She hates that she broke her rule.

 

She hates how the others seem to be taking at the very least a cursory interest in the world outside the windows, how fascinated they are with space; the winding colors, the stars speckling inky darkness like hypnosis.

 

She hates how empty and vast she finds it. She knows this is likely the one and only chance she’ll have to see space; or at least so much of it, while it’s so unabridged. But she finds it completely and utterly depressing. Therefore, she rarely tears her eyes away from the window she sits by during the weeks it takes them to travel galaxies.

 

She hates it, probably because it mirrors the emptiness and the vastness she feels inside. She’s always hated things that remind her of her emotions. (She should have applied that logic to Steve.)

 

She hates the way she feels inside. She hates how completely different it is from how she felt just weeks ago. She hates how that feeling, at least towards the end, was unquestionably an utter manipulation. She hates that she let herself be manipulated.

 

She hates the beautiful things she sees out that window that she can’t find beauty in; hates how they taunt the girl who sees them, who had been stupid enough to convince the machine she lived in to let her out.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

Natasha bursts into a hallway, stance wide and ready, both guns held aloft. When she finds no one there, she lowers them to her sides, fingers still poised alongside the triggers, walking carefully down the dark hallway.

 

Hulk’s not-so-distant roars waft toward her from the part of the space station he, Tony, and Thor are in. Clint and the SHIELD team that had come on a different ship are still in the hallway she just left, releasing the prisoners inside the cells that line the hallway.

 

They had let her go, as if it was planned. In a way, it had been; it is an understood truth that, though the team is all here for one reason, Natasha is single-minded. The hope had taken root, and grown, despite her best efforts.

 

The cells lining the hallway Natasha clears are all unlocked, so far; either pristine and never having been used, or recently emptied, their tenants vacated. There are bodies still in some.

 

Natasha comes to a door, at the end of the hallway. This one—this one, is locked. Her breath catches in her chest.

 

The hope had flourished, actually.

 

Natasha burns through the door’s hinges with a small, handheld blowtorch she keeps on her belt. She shoulders it in once she’s finished. As it falls to the floor, the thick smell of blood both old and fresh hits her hard in the face. Her breath catches in her chest.

 

The room isn’t small, but it isn’t big either. About big enough for maybe two people to stretch out in. But that isn’t even the point. It’s still a room no one should ever be put in. And yet, there Steve is, huddled in a corner near the back of the room. He hasn’t even flinched at the new presence in his cell.

 

Natasha advances, kneeling down next to Steve. He sits against the wall with his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms pressed to both sides of his skull, fingers clasped over his head. He doesn’t move an inch, and he doesn’t hear Natasha when she begins to whisper to him, trying to get his attention.

 

It takes him scrunching his eyes to shut them tighter, and the muscles in his forearms flexing as he presses them harder over his ears, for Natasha to realize he hears her, and is just ignoring her. For her to realize how many rescue missions the shapeshifters have made him sit through. How many, before he learned to pay them no mind.

 

Natasha tells Steve in a low voice that she knows, and that she promises this is real, and that he’s going to be okay.

 

The Black Widow has made many an empty promise over the years.

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

The recovery room is at the Tower instead of SHIELD, because they all figure getting Steve to believe the situation is real will be their biggest challenge, and familiarity will be good.

Natasha sits by Steve’s hospital bed. She almost never leaves. She doesn’t care how that makes her look.

 

Natasha sits by his bedside, and she watches. He still looks the same, really; he’s still the same well-muscled super-soldier he’s always been, despite dehydration and being undernourished. Natasha knows that if he had gone a hostile rout at the Skrull base, they would have had a bit of a problem on their hands. But he’s been worn away, somehow, without really changing.

 

There’s an overabundance of evidence of extensive physical torture; most notably the broken bones that his serum _had_ healed, but since they hadn’t been set, had healed wrong. They had recently been broken again and set properly by SHIELD, and were what caused most of him to be covered in casts. Most of the other injuries are no more than scars, now, which are already starting to fade.

 

But that’s the physical. Natasha knows the physical is never really the problem. It’s one of the few things she can really remember.

 

Steve’s been worn away, somehow, without really changing. Natasha can’t put her finger on it, but as she sits and watches she sees it, time and time again. Then he wakes, and he looks at her, and his eyes have changed—after all, it’s never been the physical.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

They all try to convince Steve that they really are themselves, that this really is New York. They tell him things only they could possibly know. Steve gives them all a laconic look, but he doesn’t call them out on anything. Though, Natasha supposes, he can’t exactly speak with a broken jaw anyway. She wonders if the things they’ve all said were really things only they would know.

 

When they ask him the last thing he remembers, there’s a moment of introspection, and Natasha wonders if Steve’s doppelganger is the only sadist among his comrades, and she wonders what they showed him. Steve finally gives a pointed look at Thor, and it takes them a moment, but they figure out he means the visit Sif and the Warriors Three made to Midgard, during which Jane and Darcy had flown in from New Mexico. It was one of the few times the team had seen Hulk truly drunk—apparently, he’s a happy one. (The occasion was also well after Steve and Natasha had begun their relationship—in fact, it was about four months after they’d decided to get married. Natasha’s mask nearly shatters by the relief that crashes over her; and her want to not have been in a relationship with a Skrull is only a small part of it—most of it is purely for Steve. Natasha’s also unprepared for the part of her, though very small, that she realizes had wanted to be able to forget she and Steve had ever happened.)

 

Steve looks at them all like he’s examining them, and Natasha supposes he is. The Black Widow is hard pressed to keep herself holding his gaze. His suspicion twists something under her ribcage. She wonders how long it will be before he believes them. She doesn’t spend her time convincing him, just stays with him. She tries to be as warm as she can, but that something keeps twisting.

 

Natasha tries to be warm, but she doesn’t exactly succeed. She doesn’t want to overdo it, and make it seem like she’s an alien trying too hard, but in doing that, she comes across a little cold, and she doesn’t think that’s helping her either. That might not be her only problem, though. She tries to be warm, she tries to be nice, but there’s a part of her that keeps seeing that cruel smirk—and there’s a part of her screaming for her not to do this again. The machine is trying to bury the girl, and whether or not the self-preservation is a cover, Natasha doesn’t know. She’s aware of how selfish that makes her.

 

But no matter the reason, she comes across distant, and so it surprises her when Steve looks at her, his final examination, and she thinks she passes. She wonders what tipped the scales, especially since the breakthrough came only with her, and the others have made much better efforts. But then she realizes.

 

She’s been cold, aloof, and distant. Any attempts she’s made have been irrevocably inept. And Natasha realizes, that is exactly what tipped the scales. It’s what made Steve decide she must really be her; not whatever horrible attempts she’s made to show him she’s someone who loves him—though she is. She really is.

 

Natasha opens her mouth to say something to the man who is no longer holding her gaze, because he’s wrong, and also maybe she might not like what she’s just seen in the mirror. She opens her mouth to defend herself, but she closes it and presses her lips together, because Steve’s hit the nail on the head.

 

When Bruce comes in to check on how he’s healing, Natasha slips out.

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

Steve would be doing this better. Not to say he wouldn’t have his own problems, like the people who know Captain America but not Steve Rogers would think. But he would push them aside and be as strong as Natasha would need him to be. Whether or not a breaking point would come would have remained to be seen. But either way, he would be doing this better. He would have endless reserves of patience, and he would pull her back, the way he’d drawn her out the first time. He wouldn’t be doing this the way Natasha is.

 

She thinks it might be the desire to save face—in general, and in front of someone so much better than she is—that keeps her from taking an assignment in a country far away. Natasha’s learned her lesson, and she wonders if she can consciously make the same mistake again. Maybe not, if she keeps thinking of Steve as a mistake. (On the other hand, maybe love is what keeps her here—because there _is_ love.)

 

Steve’s stopped looking at them all like he’s wondering if they’re Skrulls, but he does watch them, sometimes, almost as if they’ve done something that he doesn’t quite blame them for, and Natasha can’t figure out why. But she does know, now, that the ice and the distance isn’t all her doing; it isn’t just her who’s cutting the legs out from under her tries.

 

But she does try. Healing is a process, that she knows, and she tries to help. Her problems are her own, and even if she does decide to leave, any thoughts of such things should be kept for a time after Steve is, at least, _stable._ So she tries to help, and she drifts slowly closer. But in doing so, Natasha realizes that her need to stay unemotional and unattached is only half of her problem.

 

Natasha hated the Skrull who replaced Steve for his being able to manipulate her. During her attempt at interrogation, she didn’t let her cards show, but ever since then, thoughts of the thing have been met with disgust. She holds the alien in a place of deep contempt and—though she doesn’t admit it to herself, maybe because she isn’t quite sure—fear. So Natasha drifts slowly closer to Steve, and when she does, she sees that _smirk_. The realization hits her like a ton of bricks, and it has to show, because Steve asks her if she’s okay. She has no answer to give.

 

The feeling doesn’t go away, as much as she’d like it to, as much a she’d like to go back to the time before all this, when she could bury herself in warm, strong arms that made her feel a kind of safe she hadn’t felt since she’d done the same with Clint. The feeling doesn’t go away, and she doesn’t manage to hide this one, though she tries. She hides in the bathroom sometimes; sits on the floor and thinks about how horrible she is for this.

 

Natasha catches Steve looking at her one day, as if he’s either appreciating her for sticking with him through her angsts, or wondering what kind of person she is for having them. Either way, he knows, and Natasha thinks he might know exactly, because he looks like he understands, if he doesn’t quite condone.

 

Steve’s eyes burn holes through hers, and she looks away, though she should have come far enough by now to never look away from anyone or any accusation.

 

Steve has always had very expressive eyes. Expressive and soulful.

 

That didn’t used to peel at her soul.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Natasha rolls off the bed, grabbing the handgun under it as she does. She comes up from her roll already aiming—

 

“Natasha,” Steve says, firmly but quietly. “Natasha it’s me. It’s me. Natasha.”

 

Natasha blinks, and Steve sits up in bed, his hands up, and she half-crouches, half-kneels on the floor, aiming straight in front of her, at him, and—

 

And it really is Steve, this time. Natasha holds the gun aloft for a moment longer, disliking how uneven her breathing is, and then she lifts it away from Steve and rises to stride out of the bedroom.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

When Natasha comes back, Steve is sitting against the headboard with his knees drawn up to his chest, pensive in the lamplight. She doesn’t think he’s done anything in the time she’s been gone, and she chooses now to realize he hasn’t drawn anything since he’s been back.

 

She sits cross-legged in front of him, her back to the foot of the bed. “…This isn’t working,” she says after a moment.

 

Steve lifts his eyes to hers.

 

“We can’t just keep doing this,” she says, because if anything they’ve been doing for the past few months would have given them something positive, they would have seen results by now.

 

Steve nods.

 

“We have to do something,” Natasha whispers.

 

Steve doesn’t do anything, this time.

 

“We can’t do nothing!” Natasha cries, aghast, because as hard as this has been, she won’t lose him. She can’t. Then she sees that _look_ on Steve’s face. The not quite blame he gives them all. “…We can’t do nothing,” Natasha says, not quite a question, but Steve still doesn’t answer. He doesn’t anything, anymore. “We have to fix this, Steve.”

 

“I _know_ …” Steve says; as if he means it, but is still fighting against something.

 

 “Then what?” She asks. Steve looks at her, and opens his mouth as if to speak, but he closes it and keeps the explanation he might not even have behind a locked jaw. He knows, she knows, they both know, and yet here they are.

 

“We _were_ happy, it wasn’t just me,” Natasha says, and an expression of pain crosses Steve’s face, and Natasha supposes that’s him agreeing with her. She shakes her head, mouth open. “…I…I… I don’t know what you want from me. I should, but I don’t,” Natasha says, voice rising and cracking in places. “I don’t know how to do this, Steve, and I don’t know what you want me to do! You won’t let me back in! And I know I deserve it but that isn’t why you’re doing it!”

 

And she knows she’s right, she knows this ice isn’t all her doing. Steve knows it too, but all he does is look away. The Skrulls have poisoned them, and she doesn’t know how. But this can’t be their end. Natasha leans forward and takes his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her, though he has no trouble meeting her eyes with regret in his own. “I don’t know what they did to you,” she whispers urgently, “but we have to fix it. We have to fix this. You have to tell me what to do, I’ll do it, I promise, Steve, I promise. But I don’t know what to do, you have to tell me, Steve, I don’t… What am I supposed to do? What do I do?”

 

The look at each other for a long moment, both of them desperate and despairing. “…I don’t know,” Steve whispers back, and Natasha knows enough to know he means she can do nothing.

 

She’s numb, for a minute, her eyes searching his face for an in of any kind. She finds nothing, except the things she already knows; that his refusals are the same as hers—not wanted but not fought.

 

They’re close enough that Natasha feels his exhalations on her cheeks, sees the faint dusting of freckles over his nose. She searches his face again, and she thinks—no, she _knows_ —that this _can’t_ be the end for them. It just can’t. It was never supposed to be this way.

 

She kisses him, and she doesn’t stop, and Steve doesn’t make her stop, and he kisses her back, and as she slides her hands under his white cotton shirt her fingers run into the scars that haven’t faded yet.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

It was a last, desperate attempt; Natasha trying to prove they were both wrong. Or maybe her trying to see if there was, in fact, something left to strive for. Or maybe it was an attempt at dysfunctional, physical healing. Or maybe it was that type of drunk, raucous denial. Or maybe it was a manifestation of the chemistry they’ve always had. Or maybe it was the manifestation of the love that didn’t want to be shut in the box they were stuffing it in. Or maybe she was saying goodbye—to Steve or whatever they had been. Or maybe it was some amalgamation therein, or something else entirely, or maybe it was nothing at all.

 

Natasha doesn’t know, and she doesn’t really puzzle it out. She twists her neck to better see Steve’s side of the mattress. He’s lying on his side, his pillow at an angle so he can squeeze it between his forearms while still having it support his head. One of his fingernails is digging into a silvery scar on the opposite wrist, the kind one would get if one tried to slit them. Natasha doesn’t know if he had. He’s staring at the mattress either blankly or pensively, the blue of his irises obscured by thick lashes. Natasha takes a moment to appreciate how impossibly pretty he is—to better match his soul. She couldn’t have aimed higher if she’d tried.

 

Whatever it had been, it hadn’t worked. Nothing had changed.

 

Natasha slides out of bed and picks her clothes up off the floor. She closes the bedroom door behind her as she leaves, not sparing him so much as a backward glance, though she still knows, Steve doesn’t make a move to stop her. She dresses in the hallway.

 

As she descends to the Tower’s lobby, Natasha sighs at the elevator walls. No, she couldn’t have aimed any higher if she had tried.

 

But then, Clint has always been the marksman.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should have Part Two, where the story will conclude, up shortly.


End file.
